Improving Minimum Bayes Risk Decoding with Multi-Prompt
Not on the map. Why?
Abstract (arXiv)
While instruction fine-tuned LLMs are effective text generators, sensitivity to prompt construction makes performance unstable and sub-optimal in practice. Relying on a single "best" prompt cannot capture all differing approaches to a generation problem. Using this observation, we propose multi-prompt decoding, where many candidate generations are decoded from a prompt bank at inference-time. To ensemble candidates, we use Minimum Bayes Risk (MBR) decoding, which selects a final output using a trained value metric. We show multi-prompt improves MBR across a comprehensive set of conditional generation tasks, and show this is a result of estimating a more diverse and higher quality candidate space than that of a single prompt. Further experiments confirm multi-prompt improves generation across tasks, models and metrics.
Key facts. Cited by 13 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 58 of its 82 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 22 Jul 2024.
Builds on
58 of 82 references.
References · 58
- 2023GPT-4 Technical Reportcited by 18,132
- 2022Training language models to follow instructions with human feedbackcited by 15,712
- 2023Llama 2: Open Foundation and Fine-Tuned Chat Modelscited by 12,865
- 2019Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networkscited by 9,049
- 2021Evaluating Large Language Models Trained on Codecited by 8,053
- 2023Efficient Memory Management for Large Language Model Serving with PagedAttentioncited by 5,767
- 2022Self-Consistency Improves Chain of Thought Reasoning in Language Modelscited by 5,601
- 2019BERTScore: Evaluating Text Generation with BERTcited by 5,462
- 2021Prefix-Tuning: Optimizing Continuous Prompts for Generationcited by 3,878
- 2021Finetuned Language Models Are Zero-Shot Learnerscited by 3,747
- 2022Scaling Instruction-Finetuned Language Modelscited by 2,997
- 2019The Curious Case of Neural Text Degenerationcited by 2,881
38 more
- 2023Code Llama: Open Foundation Models for Codecited by 2,105
- 2022Beyond the Imitation Game: Quantifying and extrapolating the capabilities of language modelscited by 1,970
- 2020mT5: A massively multilingual pre-trained text-to-text transformercited by 1,813
- 2018A Call for Clarity in Reporting BLEU Scorescited by 1,790
- 2022Rethinking the Role of Demonstrations: What Makes In-Context Learning Work?cited by 1,413
- 2021Fantastically Ordered Prompts and Where to Find Them: Overcoming Few-Shot Prompt Order Sensitivitycited by 1,122
- 2020COMET: A Neural Framework for MT Evaluationcited by 1,024
- 2022Large Language Models Are Human-Level Prompt Engineerscited by 1,020
- 2023StarCoder: may the source be with you!cited by 790
- 2023Quantifying Language Models' Sensitivity to Spurious Features in Prompt Design or: How I learned to start worrying about prompt formattingcited by 778
- 2023A Prompt Pattern Catalog to Enhance Prompt Engineering with ChatGPTcited by 612
- 2023Is ChatGPT a General-Purpose Natural Language Processing Task Solver?cited by 486
- 2024Contrastive Preference Optimization: Pushing the Boundaries of LLM Performance in Machine Translationcited by 390
- 2023How Good Are GPT Models at Machine Translation? A Comprehensive Evaluationcited by 344
- 2021Experts, Errors, and Context: A Large-Scale Study of Human Evaluation for Machine Translationcited by 333
- 2023State of What Art? A Call for Multi-Prompt LLM Evaluationcited by 299
- 2024Aya Model: An Instruction Finetuned Open-Access Multilingual Language Modelcited by 292
- 2023xCOMET: Transparent Machine Translation Evaluation through Fine-grained Error Detectioncited by 260
- 2022Demystifying Prompts in Language Models via Perplexity Estimationcited by 215
- 2022CometKiwi: IST-Unbabel 2022 Submission for the Quality Estimation Shared Taskcited by 205
- 2024Tower: An Open Multilingual Large Language Model for Translation-Related Taskscited by 205
- 2021Reframing Instructional Prompts to GPTk's Languagecited by 176
- 2022In-context Examples Selection for Machine Translationcited by 172
- 2020Is MAP Decoding All You Need? The Inadequacy of the Mode in Neural Machine Translationcited by 137
- 2022Natural Language to Code Translation with Executioncited by 122
- 2020Neural CRF Model for Sentence Alignment in Text Simplificationcited by 106
- 2021High Quality Rather than High Model Probability: Minimum Bayes Risk Decoding with Neural Metricscited by 104
- 2020ASSET: A Dataset for Tuning and Evaluation of Sentence Simplification Models with Multiple Rewriting Transformationscited by 101
- 2023Scaling up COMETKIWI: Unbabel-IST 2023 Submission for the Quality Estimation Shared Taskcited by 88
- 2021Larger-Scale Transformers for Multilingual Masked Language Modelingcited by 86
- 2022Coder Reviewer Reranking for Code Generationcited by 83
- 2021Prompt Waywardness: The Curious Case of Discretized Interpretation of Continuous Promptscited by 64
- 2021Sampling-Based Approximations to Minimum Bayes Risk Decoding for Neural Machine Translationcited by 63
- 2023Epsilon Sampling Rocks: Investigating Sampling Strategies for Minimum Bayes Risk Decoding for Machine Translationcited by 57
- 2021Understanding the Properties of Minimum Bayes Risk Decoding in Neural Machine Translationcited by 56
- 2022Follow the Wisdom of the Crowd: Effective Text Generation via Minimum Bayes Risk Decodingcited by 54
- 2022LENS: A Learnable Evaluation Metric for Text Simplificationcited by 54
- 2023It's MBR All the Way Down: Modern Generation Techniques Through the Lens of Minimum Bayes Riskcited by 49
50 most cited of 58 All 58 (JSON)
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2024: 3; 2025: 6; 2026: 4.
13 papers.
Sort:
By area:
- 2024Do NOT Think That Much for 2+3=? On the Overthinking of o1-Like LLMscited by 564
- 2025Thoughts Are All Over the Place: On the Underthinking of o1-Like LLMscited by 162
- 2025A Survey of Efficient Reasoning for Large Reasoning Models: Language, Multimodality, and Beyondcited by 131
- 2025Evaluation of Best-of-N Sampling Strategies for Language Model Alignmentcited by 38
- 2026CycleVLA: Proactive Self-Correcting Vision-Language-Action Models via Subtask Backtracking and Minimum Bayes Risk Decodingcited by 13
- 2024Diversity Explains Inference Scaling Laws: Through a Case Study of Minimum Bayes Risk Decodingcited by 8
- 2024M-Ped: Multi-Prompt Ensemble Decoding for Large Language Modelscited by 3
- 2025Theoretical Guarantees for Minimum Bayes Risk Decodingcited by 3
- 2025Case-Based Decision-Theoretic Decoding with Quality Memoriescited by 1
- 2026VeriSpace: Spatially Grounded Action Verification for Vision-Language-Action Modelscited by 1
- 2025Minimum Bayes Risk Decoding for Error Span Detection in Reference-Free Automatic Machine Translation Evaluationcited by 0
- 2026Just Pass Twice: Efficient Token Classification with LLMs for Zero-Shot NERcited by 0
- 2026Enhancing Small Language Models for Power Outage Report Generation via Minimum Risk Training23 Sep 2026
- 2026VeriSpace: Spatially Grounded Action Verification for Vision-Language-Action Models9 Jun 2026
- 2026Just Pass Twice: Efficient Token Classification with LLMs for Zero-Shot NER6 Apr 2026
- 2026CycleVLA: Proactive Self-Correcting Vision-Language-Action Models via Subtask Backtracking and Minimum Bayes Risk Decoding5 Jan 2026
- 2025Minimum Bayes Risk Decoding for Error Span Detection in Reference-Free Automatic Machine Translation Evaluation8 Dec 2025
- 2025Case-Based Decision-Theoretic Decoding with Quality Memories16 Sep 2025
- 2025A Survey of Efficient Reasoning for Large Reasoning Models: Language, Multimodality, and Beyond27 Mar 2025
- 2025Theoretical Guarantees for Minimum Bayes Risk Decoding18 Feb 2025
- 2025Evaluation of Best-of-N Sampling Strategies for Language Model Alignment18 Feb 2025
- 2025Thoughts Are All Over the Place: On the Underthinking of o1-Like LLMs30 Jan 2025
- 2024Do NOT Think That Much for 2+3=? On the Overthinking of o1-Like LLMs30 Dec 2024
- 2024M-Ped: Multi-Prompt Ensemble Decoding for Large Language Models24 Dec 2024
- 2024Diversity Explains Inference Scaling Laws: Through a Case Study of Minimum Bayes Risk Decodingcited by 8
- 2024M-Ped: Multi-Prompt Ensemble Decoding for Large Language Modelscited by 3
- 2025Theoretical Guarantees for Minimum Bayes Risk Decodingcited by 3
- 2025Case-Based Decision-Theoretic Decoding with Quality Memoriescited by 1
- 2025Minimum Bayes Risk Decoding for Error Span Detection in Reference-Free Automatic Machine Translation Evaluationcited by 0
- 2026Just Pass Twice: Efficient Token Classification with LLMs for Zero-Shot NERcited by 0
- 2026Enhancing Small Language Models for Power Outage Report Generation via Minimum Risk Trainingcited by 0
- 2026Enhancing Small Language Models for Power Outage Report Generation via Minimum Risk Training23 Sep 2026
- 2026Just Pass Twice: Efficient Token Classification with LLMs for Zero-Shot NER6 Apr 2026
- 2025Minimum Bayes Risk Decoding for Error Span Detection in Reference-Free Automatic Machine Translation Evaluation8 Dec 2025
- 2025Case-Based Decision-Theoretic Decoding with Quality Memories16 Sep 2025
- 2025Theoretical Guarantees for Minimum Bayes Risk Decoding18 Feb 2025
- 2024M-Ped: Multi-Prompt Ensemble Decoding for Large Language Models24 Dec 2024
- 2024Diversity Explains Inference Scaling Laws: Through a Case Study of Minimum Bayes Risk Decoding19 Oct 2024